‘I was expecting that this was it’

A lot of you liked the piece we ran earlier today on retired Air Force Lt. Col. John Yuill, the one-time B-52 pilot who spent 3 1/2 months as a prisoner of war after being shot down over Hanoi.

And it was three-and-a-half months. You math whizzes out there who saw ” 312″ in the story, and then e-mailed me to say that translated into 26 years, had a good time at my expense. I do know where to put the fraction symbol now, thank you.

But back to Yuill, a brave pilot and a great guy. We left him floating down toward Hanoi at the end of the story.

That’s where I ran out of space.

It was night, as you’ll recall, Dec. 22, 1972. Two surface-to-air missiles, called SAMs, had struck the bomber. Barely under Yuill’s control, the B-52 went black. There was a hole in the cockpit.

Yuill saw that one of the wings was on fire and wondered if it might snap, sending the jet spiraling out of control. He didn’t want to do it, but made himself flip the switch that alerted the crew to bail out. All six men got out.

One saw it blow up.

“As I came though the overcast, just shortly before I hit the ground, I could see the muzzle flashes from the small arms fire, and then I hit the ground,” he said. “It’s a jolt. I couldn’t see anything because it was the middle of the night.”

In his second tour of Vietnam, Yuill had gone through survival training. But he’d never really expected to get shot down and hadn’t taken it all that seriously.

Given where he was, it probably wouldn’t have mattered if he had been the course’s top graduate.

“When I stood up trying to take the helmet off and taking the parachute off the harness, I heard voices,” Yuill, 73, of Fort Worth said. “I was in a rural area on a little ranch or farm.

“I noticed there were about a dozen people coming around the building towards me. They helped me out of my parachute harness and got my helmet off. In fact, they helped me so much that they were taking my flight suit off.”

Yuill stood in his bare feet, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. They even took his watch.

I didn’t ask him, but imagine that he shivered. It was cold in North Vietnam in the winter, but there were worse things to face. The first moments and hours of captivity, for example, are always the most dangerous. Survive them and chances are good you’ll make it home. Make a wrong move, provoke the wrong guy, and the deal’s off.

There were a few people with weapons in the crowd but most looked to be locals – a good sign in a bad moment.

“I was expecting that this was it and I was expecting to see a lot of hatred in their eyes, but what I saw was a lot of curiousity. I imagine I may have been the first American they had seen.”